Burning House

Carrie Schneider

January 16 - February 16, 2014

Between 2010 and 2011, Carrie Schneider took twelve trips to northern Wisconsin, each time building a small wooden house, rowing it to a tiny island, setting it on fire, and photographing and filming it. The endurance of her performative action is mirrored in the fortitude of the house, which, although perpetually engulfed in flames, never seems to burn down, even as the times of day and seasons shift. Ultimately, Schneider produced a series of 15 photographs and one 12-minute video. Argentinian composer Cecilia López’s soundtrack for the video was created by recording the resonances and feedback coming from giant sheets of scrap metal called 'chapas.'

For the first time, a selection of Schneider's Burning House photographs will be exhibited with a large-scale projection of her 2012  Burning House video. A takeaway poster featuring an essay by exhibition curator Kendra Paitz will be available in a limited quantity. A digital version is available under Exhibition Information. 

Schneider's work has been included in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norway; and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Chicago Cultural Center; School of the International Center of Photography, New York; Kunsthal Charlottenberg, Copenhagen, Denmark; Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut; The Kitchen, New York; and Galería Alberto Sendrós, Buenos Aires. The artist has received grants or fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, The Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Illinois Arts Council. Schneider has been a Fulbright Fellow at Kuvataideakatemia (Academy of Fine Arts), Helsinki, Finland, and a Sumner Rulon-Miller Fellow at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Madison, Maine. She received her B.H.A. at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh in 2001 and her M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Schneider is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn.